PBS has a website called MediaShift, billed as “Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution.” Based on an alarming post this week headlined “Tear Down the Wall Between Business and Editorial!” (12/7/11), the revolution looks rather revolting.
The piece is written by Dorian Benkoil, who “handles marketing and sales strategies for MediaShift, and is the business columnist for the site”–a job description that suggests that PBS has already torn down the wall between business and editorial, since those responsibilities would seem to put you in a constant position of conflict of interest. (He earlier worked as “a liaison between the sales and editorial sides” at ABCNews.com.)
The piece is a primer on “how to blur the lines in an intelligent and ethical way,”in the words of MediaShift managing editor Courtney Lowery Cowgill. It offers such tips as “If Sales Influences Editorial, It’s OK,” and insights like:
It’s easy to demean “link bait” such as “Top 10” or “How To” lists, but if your users like and share them, and they generate profitable page views, is there really harm? If there’s sponsor interest, all the better.
To be sure, the piece includes caveats, like: “You do need core principles that can’t be bent–even if that means the business doesn’t meet payroll.” But it seems completely oblivious to the dangers of basing your business model on giving the sponsors what they want. It’s hard to maintain a line in the sand when you’ve started out with the intention of blurring that line–ethically, intelligently or otherwise.
The most striking thing about the column is its celebration of profit-making as a liberating force:
Profit is what lets you not only continue another day, but also gives you the freedom to determine your own mission…. The more profit your company makes, the more leeway it has to do its work, to remain independent of government or other interference, and the more freedom to do good work.
Well, no. The point of a for-profit business is to make money, not “to do good work”; the more profit your company makes, the more it will strive to make in the future, so it can show stockholders an ever-expanding return on their investment. The pressure this puts on journalists to warp their copy is why the wall between business and editorial was made one of journalism’s “core principles that can’t be bent.”
And the difficulty of maintaining such principles in the face of the profit imperative is why PBS was set up in the first place, to provide a home for journalism free from the obligation to please sponsors. But when PBS has sales and marketing directors who also double as business columnists, I guess that kind of journalism needs to find a new home.
Can we just go ahead and make the name change now?
PBS
Profit
Before
Scruples
Money talks, and to no better effect than when objective reporting comes from one side of the mouth it shares with corporate interests.
In the dictatorship of money, money’s diction is unsurpassed in speaking for the corporate interests. In fact, it screams.
PBS is another example of form, void of content: ostensibly a form for the service of public interest, but its content hollowed out by the dictates of corporatism.
PBS/NPR is neutered and useless. The Republicans won by proxy, and NPR/PBS should quietly slip into the abyss of night.
I too have noticed how slanted and hollowed out its content has become. Maybe it’s time to force PBS to face reality, and accept its new name, the Private Broadcasting Network. Maybe it’s time to “Occupy PBS”. “Boys and girls, the emperor has no clothes!”
Whaddya expect from an outfit that is funded by corporations and corporation-loving foundations? If PBS fails to toe the line, those bucks go away. PBS needs to be restarted, with a total ban on donations, and fully funded by taxes, with complete removal of “congressional” or “executive” oversight by corporation-loving elected officials.
Is anyone circulating a petition or other activism effort to counteract the push that already has make PBS less in the public interest? Surely there are enough people who care and who will be moved to take action once they understand the issue.
Profit comes from the greed and exploitation of capitalism and is just as injurious to truth as war (as most advertising attests). When jouralism veers from truth, it becomes propaganda and we certainly need no more of that!
one person’s ‘truth’ is another person’s ‘propaganda’ … WHERE the money comes from will always slant the ‘truth’. Therefore, it is simplistic to suppose that ‘government’ (whatever this is supposed to refer to?) is somehow PURE… this is a flawed supposition, of course. How to provide an alternative to big business control? I have no idea. I watch TV on rare occasion. Just turn the thing off. Perhaps the internet will slowly usurp the ubuquitous influence of the idiot box.
I’l donate to PBS when they restore Bill Moyers, Now, and World Focus – which had the only live coverage of the Gaza war via Al Jazeera. All went poof and disappeared on the same night. A purge never explained. To be replaced with the insipid Need to Know. I
Don’t need to know anything they say. Either I already know it, or it’s deflated and neutered. Or not true, the usual propaganda. It is fun to see Judy Woodruff be a little less effusive towards Rs, now they’re cutting her money. Paul Salomon seems to have taken a turn right. Who are they courting? NPR’s the same. Though I don’t like the well named Gary Null who hypes hideously expensive not just ineffective but dangerous dietary supplements and says he can cure AIDs with homeopathy shy me away from WBAI. Along with 9/11 conspiracy theories. Seems the planes were holograms. I read many publications. And buy into no certainties, including entirely leftist ones. Laura’s right, though. Its easy to bitch about corporations, but it just ain’t gonna happen that the government will fund PBS and NPR, why you should donate and bitch about what you don’t like. I, for one, would like to hear Brian Lehrer deal with Palestinians NOT living in NYC. And Jon Stewart, who’s on a commercial network,do the same. Why’s it forbidden in the US to ask AIPAC’s influence be covered. We give Israel economic and military aid. We’re the only country who could pressure them to make peace, yet because of AIPAC we can’t. Even though it would be good for them and good for U.S.
This hardly seems new. During the healthcare “reform” deliberations PBS gave no significant coverage to consideration of single payer options. It hewed the corporate line of its advertisers and avoided consideration of the only policy option that can ensure affordable, universal healthcare.
PBS always interviewed health insurance company lobbyists during the debate. But the left also can also blame ourselves. We stayed at home waiting for Obama to do it for us. Instead of getting our asses to DC en masse. Instead, a few Tea Party folks showed up, screaming about “death panels” and stole the show, and at Town hall meetings with guns. Why didn’t we go to those meetings too? Not that coverage isn’t slanted. But, in large numbers, we DO get covered, though not always fairly. And Obama DID ask us to make him do it, as did FDR, The sad fact: We didn’t.
1- PBS & NPR should ban the hiring of any beltway castoffs of the commercial nets- Ifill & Woodruff would be gone first. The beltway mentality and Republicanbias on the NewsHour gets worse every year.
2- How about a bill that would allow the American people to determine PBS & NPR funding via a check off on tax returns combined with a ban on for profit corporate money?
3- I want a national satellite feed for PBS that bypasses the local stations. Where I live the redneck teabaggers have obviously taken over and have stuffed the schedule with “local interest” BS.
PBS is Pretty (much) Bought and Sold and Nurturing the Persecuted Rich (at least at WNYC in the New York area…)
I’ve grown pretty tired of glib human interest crap like “This American Life” where sad sacks agree to let wannabee Ira Glass make diverting amusements from their personal tragedies. And those joky shows about the news where we are supposed to laugh at the literati-lite when they try to make war, dictators or our depressed economy funny. Or maybe I just grew up. And they didn’t.
Bill Moyers would absolutely skewer this business-flacking “journalist.” A socratic take-down.
It’s a shame Bill won’t be alive forever.
My brother used to call PBS “Pearls Before Swine.” Now it looks like the swine have taken over the oyster farm….
April, do you really think that because a few Tea-Baggers (literally true, that part) showed up in goofy hats and real guns, things suddenly got done to their liking? No one “stayed at home” waiting for Jesus Obama Christ to part the waters and suddenly make PBS sound like Democracy Now. PBS has been getting worse and worse for years, (due to Right-wing complaining and pressure) and now, with this final outrage, we can pronounce it dead for good. People “stayed home” because the President kept moving to (and working with) the right, diasppointing his base. One thing’s for sure: The Republicons fear their base, and the Democrats (especially the White House) have mostly contempt for theirs. And, coverage is massively slanted. If it wasn’t, there would be no need for FAIR.
P.S.: Anybody who thinks this bit of doulble-think is simply and only propagandist: “. . . (B)lur the lines in an intelligent and ethical way.” (emphasis mine–TimN)
Albert that reminded me of John Lennons “IN HIS OWN WRITE”.Or the jabberwocky.Point?
PBS: Patsy Broadcasting Sold.
NPR: Nasty Poor Radio.
Thanks for mentioning this. I posted this response to Dork Benkoil on his MediaShift blog:
I have worked for no corporation that tried to make me and other technical workers into marketers. The kind of profit-centered religion you advocate won’t solve the problems journalism faces, it will make journalism more like PR. We already know how well that works for informing the public.
Huff Post seems to do all the things you advocate to drive traffic while mostly voicing progressive positions. However, few of its contributors are actually paid, and its cluttered pages are garish and irritating to browse through, so it’s not the best model. And now that it’s part of the MSM, it’s likely to start compromising on content.
Don’t go there. Instead, consider becoming a publicist for Mitt. He loves your type of thinking.
Lehrer calls for PBS, NPR to invest more in news. PBS anchor Jim Lehrer said that there is a need to increase federal funding in order to meet the need of serious journalism as broadcasters and commercial newspapers see declines. Lehrer said “public media needs to produce more local news and serious journalism because other channels are being used to tease and to entertain and only to inform across the surface. I have a good source on why this is a problem. The source is Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson told the folks back when this country was founded that the only way this democratic society we just created is going to work is if there is an informed electorate.” (Washington Post via Wikipedia).
again, ” the only way this democratic society we just created is going to work is if there is an informed electorate.”
In the United Corporations of America, an informed electorate is a problem, as informed people ask questions and make demands. Commercial television news is all about Kate Middleton, a cat in a tree, and a fantastic car accident on the other side of the country. Who knows what the government is really doing, and there is no news as to any bills that anyone can act on.
We must take our government back from corporate corruption. Ask your US Representative to co-sponsor, support, and vote for H.J.Res. 88, which will eliminate corporate personhood and overturn Citizens United. If s/he will not, then they represent corporate interests over yours, and they should be voted out of Congress as soon as possible.
We will either get a new Congress or a Constitutional Amendment that will restore the United States of America.
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were paid for their work by the way.Profit motive is the way of the world.It does not necessarily deem that the press will not be straight with their stories because of it.Anymore than government funding or donations(all from people who have an agenda)sways the direction of the press.Good ink still sells the papers.That is why no one goes to the national Inquire to catch up on politics.
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